It is one thing to store your RV for the winter time but very few people live in them when it is freezing outside, in fact most people that own them do one of two things with an RV in the winter time, they either head south to warmer weather OR the "winterize" them and leave them sit unused until the weather gets better. Then there are people like us. While we have a place in Butte MT. We have lived in our Motorhome full time the last few years traveling. Wanting to stay in it during the winter months in up state New York proved not to be much of a problem. You see when we shopped around for our Motorhome we wanted the best insulation for the hot summer months, which proved to give us the same benefits in the winter months there were a few things I needed to do to survive the cold winter, which I will share. What I want to point out is, it is not hard to prepare your RV to do this.

The very first thing you need to do is empty your fresh water tank if it IS NOT inside your rig where the heat will keep it from freezing. If it is between the frames and not heated from your heating system you have to have it empty during the winter. The next thing is wrapping "heat tape" around your water inlet hose. I use heat tape around the faucet as well as the inlet water hose. The next thing needed is to look for ALL EXPOSED water lines if you find them you have to wrap them with heat tape also. Now the next thing to remember is your drainage. You can leave your gray water valve open so it can drain freely. But as you know you cannot leave your black tank open so that has to be addressed. Our Rig has the tank heated as long as the furnace is on, BUT there are about 1-½ feet of exposed pipe between the tank and the valve, so I had to wrap that exposed pipe in order to drain the tank once a week. As long as you keep your hot water heater on it will not freeze, but make sure you checked for exposed lines to and from it just in case you need to wrap them.

Now one thing that is very important is your propane, since your hot water and furnace need it the question arises as to how to keep your tank filled. If you have a Motorhome as we do, you have two choices, first unhook and drive to get the tank filled OR get what is known as a "Extend-a-stay kit" this is a hose adapter which will allow you to use portable propane tanks so you can leave your rig set in place and only take the tanks to get filled. Of course there is a third option and that is to contact a local propane company and have them install a 1-200 gallon propane tank, and depending on how long you plan to stay that may be the easiest option for you.

Some people may feel cramped in a motor home for a winter, while others like ourselves feel cozy and warm. For whatever reason either by choice or by necessity it is easy to line in your RV in the cold winter months, and maybe a whole lot cheaper. To give you an idea, our heating bill at the highest in 2002 (Jan) was $38.00. This winter (2003) it has been up to $22.00 for November/December.

The key is "prepare" make sure you have a good well insulated RV, and just use common sense.